SAMPOL 350 MASTER’S THESIS Institutions and Armed Conflict: Is the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Unique? By Idunn Kristiansen UNIVERSITY OF BERGEN Faculty of Social Sciences Department of Comparative Politics June 2013 Abstract This thesis questions the uniqueness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and challenges the assumption that the reasons for its long duration are exceptional. Focus is set on political institutional arrangements and how these affect conflict duration in general and the endurance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular. I challenge Lijphart’s claim that consensus- building institutions are always the best to promote peace. A mixed-method strategy is used, involving a quantitative survival data analysis of all internal armed conflicts in the period 1946-2008, and a qualitative analysis based on in-depth interviews with Israeli and Palestinian experts and politicians. Results obtained indicate, first, that it is not the level of democracy that generally matters for conflict duration, but rather the degree of political exclusion. Second, proportional elections and parliamentarism generally prolong conflicts, while federalism tends to shorten them. Furthermore, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not appear to be unique when it comes to political institutional arrangements. Israel’s large share of excluded population, proportional electoral system, parliamentarism, and power centralization, also seem to be more relevant to understand the conflict’s endurance than usually recognized. This points in a direction of further research on domestic political institutions in relation to civil conflicts and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular. i Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor at the Department of Comparative Politics, Professor Tor Midtbø, for excellent advice, and my supervisor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Research Professor Håvard Hegre, for believing in the project and including me in the very inspiring PRIO environment. Your guidance and encouragement have been invaluable. I am very grateful to PRIO for the master student scholarship. I owe great gratitude to my respondents in Israel and Palestine, Dr. Menachem Klein, Daniel Sherman, Dr. George Giacaman, Khalil Shaheen, Noam Sheizaf, Lior Amihai, Ilan Baruch, Moshe Arens, Yoni Eshpar, Dr. Basem Ezbidi, Betty Herschman, Prof. Gideon Rahat, Gideon Levy, and Dr. Yair Hirschfeld. Thanks also to Ambassador Svein Sevje, Turid Bernstrøm, and Hassan, at the Norwegian Embassy in Tel Aviv, for valuable assistance. I am thankful to the PRIO Governance research group for useful comments on a draft version of the thesis. Special thanks to Helga Malmin Binningsbø, Nils Petter Gleditsch, Halvard Buhaug, Tore Wig, Julia Strasheim, Nic Marsh, Jonas Nordkvelle, and Øyvind Stiansen, for good advice. I would also like to thank Carl Henrik Knudsen, Tore Wig, and the rest of the Conceptualization and Measurement of Democracy group at University of Oslo, for including me in seminars and for much appreciated feedback. I would further like to express my gratitude to Lars Svåsand, Svein-Erik Helle, Frode Løvlie, Lise Rakner, Terje Mikal Espedal, Vincent Mrimba, Lars Gunnar Christiansen, and Maria Sørhus, at the Democracy and Development group at the Institute of Comparative Politics (University of Bergen), for helpful comments. Special thanks to Frode Løvlie for assistance concerning Palestinian interviewees as well as literature recommendations. Thanks also to my father, Stein Kristiansen, for advice and encouragement. I am grateful to Mor Karen, Malin, Alexander, and Fredrik, for shelter and hospitality during my stays in Oslo. I would also like to thank Jannike Gottschalk Ballo for great company and motivation during the process. Thanks also to Kristian Espelid for kindness and support. Remaining errors are my responsibility alone. Idunn Kristiansen, 3. June 2013 ii Table of Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 2. A Brief Background: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Israeli Institutions .................. 6 2.1. The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict ................................................................................... 6 2.2. Israeli Institutional Arrangements ............................................................................. 10 2.3. Summary ................................................................................................................... 13 3. Theoretical Background ................................................................................................... 14 3.1. Previous Studies: Causes of Civil Conflict ............................................................... 14 3.2. Theoretical Framework and Hypotheses ................................................................... 18 3.2.1. Democratic Quality ................................................................................................ 19 3.2.2. Consociational Institutions .................................................................................... 20 Proportional Representation and Parliamentary Systems .................................................... 22 Centrifugal Powers .............................................................................................................. 23 Government Inertia .............................................................................................................. 25 Federalism ............................................................................................................................ 27 3.3. Summary ................................................................................................................... 28 4. Methodology and Data ..................................................................................................... 30 4.1. Quantitative Method and Data .................................................................................. 31 4.1.1. Dataset and Unit of Analysis ................................................................................. 33 4.1.2. Dependent and Independent Variables .................................................................. 37 4.1.3. Control Variables ................................................................................................... 41 4.2. Qualitative Method and Data .................................................................................... 43 4.3. Summary ................................................................................................................... 51 5. Quantitative Empirical Analysis: The Duration of Internal Armed Conflicts .................. 52 5.1. Results from the Cox Proportional Hazard Model .................................................... 52 5.2. Israel in the General Model ....................................................................................... 57 5.2.1. Israel’s Values on the Independent Variables ....................................................... 58 5.2.2. Israel’s Deviance from the General Model ............................................................ 61 5.2.3. Israel’s Influence on Coefficients .......................................................................... 63 5.3. Summary ................................................................................................................... 67 6. Qualitative Empirical Analysis: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict .................................... 68 6.1. Democratic Quality ................................................................................................... 69 6.2. Proportional Representation and Parliamentary System ........................................... 74 6.3. Federalism ................................................................................................................. 81 6.4. Broader Perspectives of the Interviewees ................................................................. 85 6.5. Summary ................................................................................................................... 87 7. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 89 References ................................................................................................................................ 92 Appendix ................................................................................................................................ 104 iii List of Tables Table 1: Descriptive Statistics of Variables in the Analysis .................................................... 42 Table 2: Interviews Conducted in Israel and Palestine (West Bank) in February 2013 .......... 47 Table 3: Cox Regression of the Duration of Internal Armed Conflicts: 1946-2008 ............... 53 Table 4: Cox Regression without Israel ................................................................................... 66 List of Figures Figure 1: Overview of the Core Empirical Relationships to be Explored in the Thesis ............ 2 Figure 2: Map of Israel and the Occupied Territories .............................................................. 10 Figure 3: Countries with the Longest-Lasting Conflicts in the Dataset................................... 36 Figure 4: Deviance Residuals .................................................................................................. 62 Figure 5: DFBETA